I have an older Pebblebee BLE tracker that is registered with the iBeacon integration and seems to be working well overall. I do have a couple of questions though:
in the tracker’s entities I see a signal and power level, but I’m unsure which device is providing that, I believe all my BLE stuff is being done by my espHome devices around the house (or at least I don’t think I have working bluetooth directly on my Home Assistant server) but how do I see which espHome device is seeing what signal strength?
the tracker itself has a button on it which I believe sends a packet with a different UUID, but I’m unsure how to capture that to write automations for button press events? Anyone able to point me in the right direction?
Without a look at your configuration file it is really difficult to provide any meaningful help. We’d need to know which integrations you have configured, such as ESPHome, ESPresense or other BLE apps as well as what sensors are exposed to Home Assistant. There are numerous ways to gather this information, but understanding your baseline config is step number one. If you can help us by providing some of this, there are lots of folks who can help you achieve your ultimate goal.
These days the configuration file has almost nothing relevant in it because everything has been moved to the GUI.
Relevant integrations:
iBeacon
ESPHome
(Note, the bluetooth integration is NOT loaded)
The only other device I have using bluetooth at all is an LD2410 BLE mmwave radar unit which connects via one of my ESPHome devices.
My home has HAOS running on a fanless PC (simmilar to NUC) and I have 6 ESPHome devices (4 ESP-8266 and 2 ESP-32) around the house
For the moment I have a single pebblebee tracker using BLE, it has created 2 devices within the iBeacon integration, both are showing “home” if it’s at home, and “away” if it’s not. The pebblebee device has a button on it which I believe is supposed to send a different UUID, but all I’ve noticed so far is that it causes both existing devices to immediately update to “home” without waiting.
Look at your iBeacon integration. It should show you xx devices and xx entities. The devices are tags that your beacon(s) are able to track. There are a number of entities for each device. Most likely the button is either a an UPDATE (ie refresh) or a RESTART command. Your beacons should show upon the pebblebee app but since I don’t use it I can not be certain. I would also look to see if you have mqtt room installed. It is the bridge between ESP Presense and Home Assistant.
I’m not sure I follow. I am not using either ESP presence or MQTT room. Should I be? All I care about is if the device is in the house or not, I am not trying to figure out where within the house it is. And the iBeacon integration seems to be doing that properly, though I have no way of knowing via which ESP home device.
As for the devices, in the iBeacon tacker integration each device has five entities:
signal strength
estimated distance
power
vendor
device tracker
Where should I be looking for these commands for update or refresh?
I believe that pushing the button changes the UUID, but I don’t know how to see that in this integration.
All I care about is if the device is in the house or not, I am not trying to figure out where within the house it is. And the iBeacon integration seems to be doing that properly
So what is the end goal? You said it does what you want it to do and don’t care about room location, so why does it matter which device is currently detecting it? I guess I don’t understand what the ultimate goal is. If you want HOME or AWAY functionality, you have that. If you want greater control or understanding of specific beacons or devices, it may be time to dig into a more mainstream app like ESPresense.
Just FYI, this is my setup
This details 4 BlueCharm tiles and their associated entities.
The final screenshot is my ESPresense dashboard, detailing 6 beacons around the house. This gives me room level detection.
The goal of knowing which ESP device is connected to was to be able to get some idea of what the distance and signal strength means. A distance is only useful if you know what the distance is being measured from. I suppose I can do some experimentation and see what happens there.
The big goal I have with this tracker is that my daughter does not have a cell phone yet. She’ll be taking the school bus home this year, so this tracker will let us know when she gets home. My hope was that I could get the button on it to unlock the door. But without any idea of how to tell when the button is pushed I can’t figure out how to do that.
If, as I have been led to believe, a different UUID is sent when the button is pushed, it should be a simple matter of seeing when that UUID is used, however I don’t know what that UUID is, or how to tell if it is been received.
The blue charm devices also have a button on them I believe, do you have a way in your setup to detect if it has been pushed?
I did look over the PebbleBee tags but didn’t find any specific info about how the button is used, beyond initial setup, so my guess is that pressing the button will NOT be a viable solution to track your daughters arrival home. You can and should create automations that are triggered by the change of state for the tag being seen by the beacon.
As far as the active beacon, that is still uncertain to me at this time. You should probably look at all your ESP Home configurations and se if one or all are being used as a BLE tracker, in addition to whatever primary purpose they are providing. If an ESP Home device is NOT the BLE Beacon, then you’ll need to see what is. Is there built in BLE on your server that Home Assistant can access? If so, its range may be limited. Next, test one device that works and establish a perimeter just like your home zone. Outside the perimeter, the device reports away, inside the perimeter it reports home. Create an automation that uses that device state to trigger a notification that she has left or arrived home.
I feel like you are fairly close to getting what you want, but don’t understand how you got there. You really need to figure out what the beacon is and what devices it can see, and at what range. Once you know the actual name of the tag (device) in HA, you can examine its state and attributes. That will allow you to build your automation.
I don’t think you’re grasping what I’m looking for at all. That article is completely useless. I have no problem figuring out what signal strength and distance mean, but what good are they if you don’t know what the end point is? I don’t know where the receiver is. One of my ESP devices is receiving the signal from the ibeacon, but I don’t know which one, and have no way of seeing when it changes from one to another. And home assistant doesn’t seem to want to tell me.
I can easily create automations based on when my device sees the beacon arrive home, however that is a horrible way to unlock a door, as iBeacons take several minutes to change state, and are prone to brief lapses even when at home.
The question is can I detect if that button has been pushed. The iBeacon is transmitting that information in a way that is easily readable. The question is how to do the reading.
Has anyone ever managed to read when the button is pushed on any iBeacon? It’s a common feature that many models have, including the ones that you say you have. Has anyone done it?
Why not just put a smart keypad lock on the door? Give your daughter her own code and then you can even have HA notify you when she unlocks the door (and also automatically lock the door after she’s in). FWIW I have Schlage Z-Wave keypad deadbolts on 4 entry doors and they are rock solid. They are 3 or 4 years old now, there might be even better stuff out there now.
Besides, I’m not sure you want a single button device with zero security unlocking the door to your house…
I do have a question for you. I just bought a Pebblebee tag to track if my dog is home or not but I can’t figure out how to get it working with HA. I thought Bluetooth BLE would pick it up but I’m not seeing it in the ble device trackers.
How did you get yours working with iBeacon? All I have is a bluetooth dongle in my HA box.
I just used the Ibeacon integration and it picked it right up.
As for the security, it may have no security on it, but that’s still more security than the physical key that you could use, and way more security than a combination keypad, so I’m not really worried.
You shouldn’t have to fill out that field. That field is only if your device broadcasts a UUID but does not broadcast a name.
If, after several minutes of waiting, the IV can integration has still not picked up your device, then you can try a BLE scanner app on your phone to get the UUID and manually add it to that field in case no name is being broadcast.
I do wonder though if you’re particular tag maybe a different technology than mine. Mine is specifically an ibeacon whereas I believe some of the newer ones are not.
